Bugger everyone 
R.W. Johnson
- The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders since 1945 by Peter Hennessy
Peter Hennessy’s new book hasn’t persuaded me that its central preoccupation, the current dispute over prime ministerial power and its extent, is not sterile and, indeed, rather boring – yet it is a splendid read. The truth is that the Westminster system is quite inadequately democratic and transparent, and Hennessy is, if anything, too respectful and conventional in his proposals about how the office might be reformed. Party discipline, a weak Parliament, quasi-presidential power, great secrecy and the fact that the PM, invariably gifted with a safe seat, is insulated from direct electoral pressure all mean that the system is just not accountable enough. The most disappointing part of Blair’s constitutional reforms is that he hasn’t faced up to the problems of the central edifice itself. There is no separation of powers, there are far too many MPs, secrecy makes it much too easy to hoodwink Parliament and the public, the second chamber remains a patronage-based absurdity and so on.
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R.W. Johnson is an emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. His new book, South Africa’s Brave New World, will be published by Penguin in the spring.
Other articles by this contributor:
Cads · Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War Two Espionage by Joseph Persico.
How Mugabe came to power · R.W. Johnson talks to Wilfred Mhanda
Mr Shepperd to you · Classes and Cultures: England 1918-51 by Ross McKibbin
Burning Blankets · Robert Mugabe’s latest tidy-up
Nerds, Rabbits and a General Lack of Testosterone · Major and Lamont
Her Boy · Mark Thatcher
Rogue’s Paradise · The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War by Apollon Davidson and Irina Filatova
Where do we go from here? · Zimbabwe
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